Multi-tasking just get better, Check out iOS 11 Review

This year, Apple decided to add another member to their OS family, the iOS 11. This is the eleventh major release of the iOS mobile operating system, being the successor to iOS 10.

It was announced and the first beta version released to developers at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference on June 5, 2017, with a public beta released in late June, and a stable version for consumers was released in most countries on September 19, 2017. Some countries got the update on September 20, 2017.

Now apple made a lot of changes and tweaks on the iOS 11, which would take a long time to fully list, but in this review, we would just be highlighting some of them.

iOS 11 Review: Here are some of the changes on iOS 11:

Lock screen and Notification

Lock screen and Notification Center are combined, allowing all notifications to be displayed directly on the lock screen. Scrolling up and down will either show or hide notifications.

Animoji

This is one of the exciting things to look out for in the iOS 11. Apple combines emoji with animations, and it takes advantage of the iPhone X’s 3D face-scanning TrueDepth camera array. The result is Animoji, which tracks the muscles in your face to animate the emoji.

Developer APIs

A new “ARKit” application programming interface (API) lets third-party developers build augmented reality apps, taking advantage of a device’s camera, CPU, GPU, and motion sensors. The ARKit functionality is only available to users of devices with Apple A9 and later processors. This is because “these processors deliver breakthrough performance that enables fast scene understanding and lets you build detailed and compelling virtual content on top of real-world scenes.” Can’t wait to use this feature.

Control Center

The Control Center redesign unifies its pages and allows users to 3D Touch (or long press on devices without 3D Touch) buttons for more options. Sliders adjust volume and brightness. The Control Center is customizable via the Settings app, and allows more settings to be shown, including cellular service, Low Power Mode, and a shortcut to the Notes app.

Siri

Siri is now smarter! The intelligent personal assistant now has a more natural voice and support language translation, with English, Chinese, French, German, Italian and Spanish available at launch. It will also support follow-up questions by users (this has been one of the major setbacks of Siri). Users will also be able to type to Siri.

Siri will be able to use “on-device learning”, a privacy-minded local learning technique to understand a user’s behavior and interests inside different apps, to offer better suggestions and recommendations.

Live Photos, the feature that adds a bit of motion magic to still photos, is even better in iOS 11. For the first time, you can use a slider to select a portion of the Live Photo that looks the best. Since Live Photos are essentially short videos, it’s like pulling the best still shot out of a video.

This is a nice change for images where the key photograph might have been blurred, because now you can select a non-blurry section of the image.

For iPhones that support Portrait Mode, iOS 11 brings some important improvements. Image quality has been improved, low light performance is better, and Portrait Mode images support optical image stabilization. Flash works in Portrait Mode for the first time, and it also supports HDR for even better lighting and filters for adding flare.

When you FaceTime someone in iOS 11 on a device that’s capable of taking Live Photos, there’s a new button for capturing a Live Photo during the chat.

Settings

A new “Do Not Disturb While Driving” mode has been added and it lets users block unnecessary notifications as long as their iPhone is connected to a vehicle through Bluetooth. An auto-reply feature sends a specific reply to senders of messages to let them know the user is currently unavailable through text.

Drag and Drop

A new Drag and Drop feature allows text, links, photos, files, and more to be transferred between one app to another without the need to bother with in-app share sheets. A tap and a hold with a finger initiates a drag action, while another finger can be used to bring up the Dock or access the Home screen to open up another app where the item being dragged can be dropped.

Drag and Drop is especially useful in Split View mode, where it’s simple to drag files between two open apps on the iPad’s display. Multiple items can be dragged and dropped at the same.

Messages

The Messages application synchronizes messages across iOS and macOS through iCloud, reflecting message deletion across devices. This feature was temporarily removed in the fifth beta release and will be returning in a future iOS 11 update. Users can send person-to-person payments with Apple Pay through Messages, although Apple has stated that this feature will come in a future iOS 11 update. A new app drawer for iMessage apps aims to simplify the experience of using apps and stickers, and an optimized storage system reduces the backup size of messages.

iOS 11 will introduce native support for QR code scanning, through the Camera app. Once a QR code is positioned in front of the camera, a notification is created offering suggestions for actions based on the scanned content.

Users will be able to record the screen natively. In order to record the screen, users must first add the feature to the Control Center through the Settings app. Once added, users can start and stop recordings from a dedicated Control Center icon, with a red bar appearing at the top of the screen indicating active recording. Pressing the red bar gives the option to end recording, and videos are saved to the Photos app.

When an iOS 11 device is attempting to connect to a Wi-Fi network, nearby iOS 11 or macOS High Sierra devices already connected can wirelessly send the password, streamlining the connection process.

A new “Core ML” software framework will speed up app tasks involving artificial intelligence, such as image recognition.

A new “Core NFC” framework gives developers limited access to the near field communication (NFC) chip inside supported iPhones, opening potential use cases in which apps can scan nearby environments and give users more information.

The volume change overlay no longer covers the screen while playing video, and a smaller scrubber appears on the top right of the screen.

After a user takes a screenshot, a thumbnail of the screenshot will appear at the bottom left of the screen. The user can then tap the thumbnail to bring up an interface that allows them to crop, annotate, or delete the screenshot.

Third-party apps can now take advantage of iCloud Keychain to allow autofilling passwords.

The user’s flight information can be viewed in Spotlight through a dedicated widget.

iOS 11 switches the top-left cellular network strength icons from five dots to four signal bars, similar to that before iOS 7.

A new “Automatic Setup” feature aims to simplify the first-time setup of new devices, with wireless transfer between the old and new device, transferring preferences, Apple ID and Wi-Fi info, preferred Settings, and iCloud Keychain passwords.

An “Emergency SOS” feature has been added that disables Touch ID after pressing the Sleep/Wake button five times in quick succession. It prevents Touch ID from working until the iPhone’s passcode has been entered.

A new “Smart Invert” feature, dubbed a “dark mode” by some publications, inverts the colors on the display, except for images, some apps, and some user interface elements.

Users get expanded control over apps’ location usage, with every app featuring a “While Using the App” location toggle in Settings. This differs from previous iOS versions, in which apps were only required to have “Never” or “Always” location options.

32-bit–only apps are no longer supported or shown in the App Store, and users who still try to open such apps receive an alert about the app’s incompatibility. iOS 11 drops the native system integration with Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and Vimeo. The iCloud Drive app is removed and replaced by the Files app. The ability to trigger multitasking using 3D Touch was removed.

Supported devices

The iOS 11 would work on 64-bit processors. Support for devices with a 32-bit processor would be dropped: specifically, the iPhone 5, iPhone 5C, and the fourth-generation iPad. It is the first version of iOS to run exclusively on iOS devices with 64-bit processors.

Supported devices include the iPhone 5S and up, the iPad Air and up, the iPad Mini 2 and up, plus the iPod Touch (6th generation).